


All the Quadrants

by benrumo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Biology, Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:32:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benrumo/pseuds/benrumo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, post-SBURB where the kids and trolls won, created a new universe, and all the dead came back to life. Now all of the quadrants will be filled. All of them. John and Karkat have already figured out their feelings towards one another, but what’s going on with Gamzee, Dave, and Tavros? Is there an ashen quadrant in their future, or are things more complicated than they seem?</p><p>(More pairings/characters will be added as we go!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Your name is John Egbert, and you are currently engaged in sloppy makeouts with your boyfriend, Karkat Vantas, on the couch you convinced him to alchemize for this exact purpose. Your hands are buried in his clothes, one under his shirt and one down the back of his pants which you’re using to guide his hips down onto yours. One of the first things you learned about troll anatomy was how fun it was to grind against Karkat’s bone bulge through a few layers of clothes. You can never get enough of the feeling because Karkat seems to enjoy it about as much as you, and once his bulge is out, applying that much pressure is a horrible idea. You savor it while you have the chance, loving the feeling almost as much as the way it makes Karkat pick up the pace, kissing you harder with a touch of sudden urgency as he moves against you.

You’re not really an expert at these sorts of things (you still blush when Dave says s-e-x), but you’re pretty sure things are about to move from sloppy makeouts to something infinitely better.

That’s when you hear the computer chime.

“Whose is it, mine or yours?” you break the kiss to ask.

“Doesn’t fucking matter. Neither of us is going anywhere.”

You giggle and smile stupidly until Karkat forcibly stops you with his tongue. You can’t help it. It just gets you so bad whenever he gets like this, with his “fuck the world, you are currently the most important thing in existence” attitude.

You do a very good job of ignoring the next several chimes. With Karkat’s help, of course. You’d just about forgotten them completely when the computer makes a new sound, one that startles your boyfriend so badly he accidentally claws your arm in his rush to find the source.

“HONK honk. HONK honk.”

“FUCK. FUCK. SHIT! WHERE THE FUCK IS IT?”

You stop looking at the new set of claw marks down your arm to watch Karkat hastily eject items from his sylladex. It’s funny until you see him eject a metal pail. It hits the wall and bounces across the floor with some very noticeable sounds, and Karkat doesn’t even care. That’s really not like him.

By the time you’ve retrieved the bucket from the floor, Karkat’s apparently found what he’s looking for. He’s already over at the computer, typing furiously with a bottle of green Faygo in his lap. Only it’s not Faygo, because Faygo isn’t green. Or it shouldn’t be when the bottle’s label is purple. And Faygo doesn’t move like that, either.

“What’s going on?” you ask as you lean over Karkat’s shoulder to read the log.

You skim over Tavros’ ums and Karkat’s blocky swearing, trying to get the gist of what’s going on. All you manage to catch is that something bad is going on at Tavros’ place before Karkat closes the window.

“Come on, we’ve got to go.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

Karkat finally sees the pail in your hand. He blushes and makes this incredibly awesome noise as he grabs for it. You pull it out of his reach at the last second and capchalogue it before he can make a second attempt.

“Damn it, John, this is not the time for indulging your idiotic prankster’s gambit!”

“I was thinking I could just hold on to it until we actually got to use it properly.”

“JOHN, there is no fucking time for this! Hand it over!”

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes, you are stealing my personal, private belongings like a grubfisted 2 sweep-old at the absolute worst fucking time!”

“Maybe I just want to make sure I’m around the next time you want to use it.”

Karkat makes a face and a sputtering sort of sound like his teeth tripped over his own tongue. It is incredibly adorable, but you’re pretty sure both of you have bigger things to be worrying about right now!

“Besides, that’s not what I meant. I meant what’s going on with Tavros?”

“It’s not Tavros that’s the problem,” Karkat says, his anger transmuting into worry. Which on Karkat is really like saying his anger transmuted into a different kind of anger, maybe a blue or green anger instead of a fussy, funny red anger. “Look, do you want to go bail your moronic human friend out of this huge mess he’s made or not?”

Karkat makes air quotes around the word “friend,” a habit you think he picked up from Jade and now greatly overuses.

“Which friend?” you ask, dogging Karkat to the door. “Dave?”

“Who else?” Karkat snaps back. “You coming or not?”

You really don’t think that Dave will ever need you to bail him out of trouble. In fact, you’re pretty sure that he’d just get pissed off if you tried, because relying on others isn’t all that cool. But there’s absolutely no way you’re just going to sit around when your friend is in trouble! Friends are there even when you don’t want them or need them. Dave gets that, even if he grumbles about you being a mother hen sometimes.

“Of course I’m coming!”

Karkat rolls his eyes.

“Of course you are. Now hurry up. I’d like to get there before one of our friends,” again with the air quotes; you’re really not sure why he keeps doing that, “ends up dead.”

#

“Um, guys? Could you maybe, sort of, stop what you’re doing? I’d really, um, appreciate it, and I think, maybe, it would be, I don’t really know, but, um, better for, everyone?”

“Dude, you need to lay the fuck off.”

“Come on, brother. Show a little motherfuckin’ faith. You just need to up and believe in your motherfuckin’ self. HONK.”

Your name is Tavros Nitram, and you are watching helplessly while two of your best friends in the whole universe strife in the middle of your respiteblock.

Even after regaining the use of your legs, your real legs and not just robo-legs, you are pretty much useless at anything relating to violence or self-confidence. But your two best friends, who you don’t really think you have any romantic inclinations for at all maybe, have been really working on that with you. They think that you probably shouldn’t act the way you do when people, sort of like Vriska mostly, talk and, um, manipulate you? But at the same time they really like you the way you are and don’t really want you to act all that different from the way you already do, so, that’s a good thing, you think.

But sometimes, you sort of really wish you could maybe teach them about not being violent? Especially since Karkat and John and some of the others all made a rule that all of you are really not supposed to kill each other in any way anymore. You’re sorry, but this scene in the middle of your living room is, well, sort of making you upset in a lot of different ways.

You shift your weight from one foot to the other, almost hopping in place, as Gamzee grabs hold of one of your hive’s internal support beams and swings around it towards Dave in a very whimsical manner. You can’t decide what to do. You have already convinced Karkat that this is probably a situation in which he could be very useful, both as Gamzee’s moirail and as the still sort-of leader of the trolls. You are really not at all sure what to do about Dave. You are kind of hoping he’ll just sort of stop once Gamzee does? But you think it is really unlikely that he’ll stop taunting Gamzee about how uncool and unironic clowns are, and that is pretty much just as bad, you think, as what Gamzee is doing.

You think maybe the worst thing about having your legs back is that now you can move anywhere. Stepping over obstacles is something that’s really easy, not hard like it was back when you were stuck in your four-wheeled device. You are even pretty good at climbing up and down stairs now. But though you can move anywhere, you somehow keep finding yourself rooted to the same spot.

“Alright, motherfucker. Don’t make me go and get my harsh on about this. Honk. Why don’t you just open the motherfuck up a little and show me your mischievous self? Or maybe you need this motherfucker’s help. Are you motherfuckin’ shy, motherfucker? Do you need me to help OPEN YOU UP? HONK honk.”

You think that maybe the way Gamzee is acting is not all that good. You mean, beyond the fact that he’s obviously kind of going to try and hurt Dave. Or, you think maybe he is. You’re not really all that sure. He’s just kind of, um, intimidating Dave? Which is kind of OK, you think, because Dave doesn’t really get intimidated at all? But this is still not really the sort of thing that makes you comfortable. Even though you find it hard to imagine (which is sort of saying a little bit about something because, you think, if there’s anything that you might be good at, it would probably being imagining stuff that’s not real in any way), you have been made aware of what happened after you died. You know the Gamzee you’re friends with now is a little bit different than the Gamzee you knew before you died. He talks a little bit different sometimes, sort of not calmer but more, um, even? But right now he’s talking even more differently than he should probably be. He’s almost yelling at Dave, which you think is really not a good sign of anything.

“Look, I get that you’re pissed because I stepped on the delicate, grub toes of your religion, or whatever, but I thought you stopped flipping your shit over that months ago.”

“Oh, I motherfuckin’ DID, bro. I flipped my motherfuckin’ shit so hard I couldn’t even tell which motherfuckin’ end of things was up. Couldn’t tell a motherfucker from a brother, and I up and did some things that NOBODY’S ever going to be forgetting their way out of. But you’re all right about that noise, brother. I went and let that shit go like a little wingbeast flying straight through my fingers when I could have crushed that motherfucker and added its strawberry jam to my growing fuckin’ collection. I let it all go, brother.”

You don’t like the way Gamzee is smiling. There’s something wrong about it. You’re not too sure you like the things he’s saying either, even though you’re pretty sure he’s still not directly threatening Dave.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What, my motherfuckin’ brother? Man, you’re going to have to lay that shit down a little more clear-like if you want me to be able to understand a motherfucker.”

You think maybe you can see Dave’s cool, um, thawing just a little. You really, really think that you should do something now, if you can.

“Um, Gamzee? I think maybe he’s talking about the way you’re calling him, um, brother? You could, um, stop that, maybe, and I think, it would help?”

“Oh, is that’s what’s up and bothering you, motherfucker?”

Gamzee swings around your internal support beam, gaining momentum until he blurs in your vision, and then he’s gone completely. You can’t find him again until he speaks.

“You getting your sad on because I’m calling you my motherfuckin’ brother?” Gamzee asks, his voice so deep and low you can barely hear it from where you stand across the room. He’s standing so close to Dave that if he moved any closer they would be engaged in sloppy makeouts. Which would, um, sort of solve the current problem but still not be a very good thing to happen in the middle of your respiteblock. “Is that because your other motherfuckin’ brother went and got himself murdered cold and dead?”

Dave’s still, so perfectly still, but it’s a bad kind of still. It leaves this sort of taste in the air that gets on your tongue and makes it hard to breath.

“You need to shut the fuck up now.”

“Did you ever up and wonder what happened to your motherfuckin’ nightmares? My best little motherfuckin’ puppet friend doesn’t talk so much these days, but whenever he goes and decides to lean on my hear ducts some, it’s always about you, brother.”

“No, uh, Dave, please, don’t!”

What happens next goes on almost too fast for you to see.

Dave shifts, maybe going for his strife specibus. At the exact same time, the door to your respiteblock opens. You turn your head on reflex to see Karkat, only to immediately realize what a huge mistake it was to look away. Dave screams and Gamzee honks. Karkat rushes past you, but Gamzee intercepts his attack.

Only it’s not an attack. Gamzee’s got Karkat in a hug.

And Dave’s not hurt. Or, well, maybe he is. He’s holding his nose, but he’s not bleeding. At least, not that you can see.  
You’re really not at all sure what just went on.

While you stand there dazed, John (where did he come from?) walks over to Dave and makes sure he’s OK.

“Son of a bitch honked my nose…”

“Pwahah!”

“Best motherfuckin’ friend! What the motherfuck are you doing in this place? Did you come to join us in these sick motherfuckin’ beats we’re laying down?”

“No, I did not come to participate in your pathetic poetry jams. Let go of me, damn it!”

“Haha, and here I was worried that you were actually in trouble.”

“Trouble? OK, seriously. The odds of me ever needing your help are so slim that if spiderbitch stole the combined luck of all three universes, you still wouldn’t stand a chance of striking lucky. You need to find another princess to save, Egderp.”

“Aw, did you just come to get your snuggle on with your best motherfuckin’ friend, then?”

Things are going to be OK now. Karkat’s here and Gamzee’s not acting strange, which means Dave’s not acting strange back. You are pretty sure that everything is going to be fine now, at least for a little while.

But you still don’t really know what to do. You still can’t move, not towards Gamzee and not towards Dave. Going towards one or the other would be a mistake, you think, because the other would see you, and that would probably be, uh, bad. And there’s sort of no way to go towards both.

You think that maybe you’ll just sit down for a bit now, right here where you’re standing. You suddenly feel very tired.


	2. Chapter 2

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you desperately wish you weren’t constantly surrounded by idiots.

You have been manipulated by the two most pathetic idiots in the world into playing a moronic game meant for human wrigglers: Chutes and Ladders. You are one chute away from ripping out your horns with your bare hands and shoving them into your ocular orbits.

“Aw, brother, that is some bad motherfuckin’ luck right there.”

“Down you go, Karkat! Woosh! Hahaha! Back to the start!”

Egbert giggles. He fucking giggles, that traitor.

“Woops. Looks like the board slipped. I guess that means its game over.”

Egbert whines about you’re being a sore loser while he collects the brightly colored human effigies he swears aren’t supposed to be representative of the hemospectrum. Yeah, right. If the effigies’ colors aren’t supposed to be their blood colors, you’d like Egbert to explain why his blue effigy and Gamzee’s purple one were climbing ladders with every roll while the red effigy you were forced to use (by Ebgert, no less!) seemed to have an unerring attraction to every fucking chute on the board. Your red human effigy has ridden all of the chutes. All of them. Most more than once.

“Hey, Gamzee what do you want to play next?” Egbert asks your moirail, right back to his normal, cheery self.

“No. Fuck you, Egbert. We are not playing another one of your stupid human games. I can’t believe your species considers this to be a source of entertainment. This is just further proof, as if I needed any, that you freaks are born with a stunted organ in your brains that that makes you such masochists.”

“Brains are organs, Karkat. They can’t have organs of their own!”

“Organelles, then. Point fucking stands.”

“Organelles? What the motherfuck is that, brother? Sounds like you’re laying down some magic words over there. Organelles, organelles! Shit, motherfucker, I think I just up and scared my own self.”

Gamzee sways from side to side, chanting ‘organelles’ like he’s hypnotizing himself. You knew for a fact that his think pan’s been sober since the incident you don’t fucking talk about. At least, you’re pretty sure. You regularly check his supor-hammock (the unholy combination of your species’ elegant recooperacoons and the humans’ cushioned bed monstrosities which you all sleep in on this planet; they resemble the lime green webs of giant spiders far too much in your opinion) to make sure he hasn’t done something idiotic like bite through the webbing to suck out the supor slime within. You even count his pillows. So, yeah, you’re pretty damn sure he’s not eating slime anymore.

But when he acts like this, it makes you less sure. Sometimes, it’s almost like nothing’s changed. If you look past the scars and past the lack of freaky clown makeup (which, if you’re honest with yourself, is getting easier as time passes), the troll in front of you could almost be the same troll you met sweeps ago, back before the game and that one fucking incident you don’t fucking talk about.

“Hey, Gamzee, have you played this one yet? It’s one of my favorites!”

Damn it. Egbert has procured another torture-box decorated with screaming human children. This one promises grating noises and flashing lights, batteries not included. You silently curse the day you gave your first wriggle, dooming yourself to this miserable existence you call a fulfilling life.

Gamzee’s still chanting to himself, ignoring your matesprit with the same infuriating efficiency that he usually reserves for ignoring you whenever you try and have a serious conversation with him.

“Uh, Karkat?”

Egbert looks to you for help for the millionth fucking time. He keeps switching between being the best of chums with Gamzee and being strangely cautious of him, like he thinks Gamzee’s going to snap and attack at any moment. You don’t really get it. Even Equius and Nepeta don’t act like this around him. After Nepeta forgave him for killing her moirail (which you still think she only did because of Equius’ sickeningly and painfully obvious infatuation with his murderer), even she managed to let the past go. She didn’t even tell Equius that Gamzee killed her too. You thought that showed a startling amount of insight and dedication to peace on her part. You were honestly impressed. Then you realized she probably only did it to indulge her black Gamzee/Equius ship.

You snatch the box out of Egbert’s hand and shake it in front of Gamzee’s face until you get his attention. He snaps out of his trance with a honk that scares you so badly your claws poke through the soft cardboard top.

“Motherfucker…”

Gamzee, suddenly awestruck, takes the torture-box from your hands with fucking reverence. Great. What made past you think it was a good idea to participate in actively making yourself miserable? Past you is such a fucking idiot, as usual.

You hope one day that you’ll forget too. Or that your motherfuckin’ best friend will one day stop honking like a retarded clown asshole. Each outcome seems as likely as the other, which is to say, not very fucking likely at all.

Gamzee lifts the lid off the box and Egbert’s at his side in a second, pulling out the red plastic tray and explain the rules of the game. Great. You are officially roped into another stupid human game. You are so fucking glad Terezi can’t see you right now. You’re glad Tavros can’t see you right now. You used to think that FLARPing and fiduspawn were games for girls. Now you’d rather be stuck playing with Tavros for a straight week than spend another hour playing these stupid human wriggler games. At least in fiduspawn things died. Even if you were playing with let’s-um-all-have-snacks! Tavros, you would have probably been given the opportunity to kill something at one point or another, which would have been a vast improvement over fucking Chutes and Ladders.

“Hey, Karkat, help me shuffle these cards.”

You push away the cards Egbert shoves at you.

“I’m not playing another one of your hideous games, Egbert,” you protest, even though you know how useless it is. There is absolutely no way you will not cave the moment he turns those huge, freaky blue eyes towards you. It works every fucking time, he is that pitiful. But just because you’re doomed doesn’t mean you have to go down without a fight.

“But Karkaaaaaaaat!” Egbert whines, stretching out the second syllable of your name for what you are certain is exactly eight a’s, a habit he picked up from Vriska and now greatly overuses.

“Fuck. You.”

“But I really think you’ll like this one! It’s exciting!”

“Is there even the threat of bloodshed?”

“I already told you, that’s not how human games work! Killing things isn’t what humans find fun! Well, I mean, some humans enjoy hunting animals, but that’s definitely not what normal human kids do!”

“Then I’m not playing.”

“This one’s about surgery! That’s kind of like killing! Come oooooooon, Karkat!”

You are more than certain that he does that just to irritate you.

You push his freaky blue eyes out of your line of vision, determined to ignore him for at least a little longer.

Surgery. Another one of those strange human concepts your species simply didn’t have. On Alternia, the sick and wounded got culled, but on Earth they coddled them back to health. And if they never got healthy, they just took care of them forever. Ridiculous, you think. If it’d been left up to you, there wouldn’t be any doctors or hospitals in the new world (which you refuse to call Alt-earth-ia, the name your retarded matesprit chose). You would have called off the culling, sure, but hospitals?

Egbert tried explaining it to you once, saying that hospitals were good and how it wasn’t the fault of the patient that they were hurt, even if it really was. Bluh, whatever. You guess they’re OK. The trolls native to the new world seem to enjoy them. You don’t get it. You’d certainly never use one. If you were hurt and at your most vulnerable, the last thing you’d want would be to let some stranger drug you and poke around in your innards with sharp objects. That’s what friends are for. Really, really fucking pitiful friends. And you’re certain you know more about how to heal your own body than any asshole in a white coat. Now you have the luxury of pitying someone enough to let them see you bleeding, but it was different back on Alternia. You had to know how to heal yourself to survive when the drones still roamed freely. It was the only way to get by as a mutant blood.

Of course, now the main assholes you pity enough to come crawling to when you’re bleeding are an incompetent clown and a human weakling who’d probably freak out and watch you bleed to death (you sure know how to pick them, don’t you?), so if you do ever get so badly hurt you can’t take care of yourself…. Fuck, you’d better hope Sollux is in one of his moods and pities you long enough to patch your holes.

“Egbert, this is the strangest and most demented thing I’ve ever seen from your planet, and that’s saying a whole fucking lot.”

You’re not even sure what you’re looking at. Egbert has placed various hivehold items (and what looks like a miniature lusus, you’re incredibly disturbed to note) into the open wounds scattered all across the naked human effigy drawn on the red tray. Then, to top it all off, he screws a light bulb into the hole where the human’s nose should be.

“So does that mean you’re going to play?”

“If only out of morbid fascination.”

“Awesome! I’ll go first to show you how it’s done.”

“Alright, motherfucker! School feed me in this crazy contraption.”

Egbert picks up a tiny pair of tweezers connected to the tray and uses them to delicately extract one of the tiny hivehold items from the human effigy’s arm, explaining as he does that the goal is to remove the item without brushing against the metal sides of the wound. You have no doubt that this game will require great skill and dexterity. You will rule at this game. There is no doubt. Fucking Chutes and Ladders and its hemospectrist ways. You won’t be beat out again. Egbert may have more luck than you (a gift from Vriska, no doubt), but there’s still no way he’ll beat you at a game of skill. You can’t wait to get your hands on those tweezers and remind Egbert…

Of what?

Wow, what the fuck? Was… was that a black sentiment? And towards your matesprit, of all the people. That’s… not good. Fuck. You don’t feel black for Egbert. Do you?

You glance up at him as he explains the purpose of the cards to Gamzee (who you can tell doesn’t understand a word) and your blood pusher practically explodes from excessive amounts of pity. It’s sickeningly sweet, emphasis on the sickening. It makes you want to pull him close enough to hear his own blood pusher pounding away in his chest. It’s always so much faster than yours, which you’re not sure is normal for his species or just normal when you’re close enough to hear it.

Before you even realize you’re moving, you’ve leaned your head against Egbert’s shoulder. You can feel how warm he is, even under his shirt. It feels nice, despite the fact that he won’t stop squirming like a wriggler. You close your eyes and wallow in the feeling for a minute. Sometimes you wonder if it’s normal for a troll to get so sappy over their matesprit. Most of the time you don’t even fucking care. If past you could see you now, he’d probably think you were the stupidest, weakest fucking idiot ever to crawl through the breeding caverns. But fuck past you. He just wouldn’t get this. How could he? You never could have imagined the strange and wonderful things having your own matesprit would do to you. All your movies never prepared you for this.

John’s fingers run through your hair for a split second before he turns back to the game. You can feel the rippling vibrations in your chest long before you hear the chirp. You bite the inside of your cheek until you manage to get yourself back under control, but you don’t open your eyes or move away. No way you’re moving, not now, when you can feel the way the muscles in Egbert’s arm flex slightly under your cheek. You remember watching him fight, seeing how strong he was not just on a screen but right in front of you. Just inches away from you. You always figured that the human’s session must have been so much easier than yours. Before they created Jack, anyway. Humans are puny and pink and infinitely weaker than your superior race of conquerors. But John wasn’t weak. Maybe it was just because he reached Godtier. You know for a fact not all humans are that strong. But John’s strength could match your own. Probably. It would be so easy to find out for sure. You’d just have to give him a little push.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, you really need to stop that line of thought.

“OK, who wants to go first?”

“Gimme,” you order, forcibly pulling yourself off John’s shoulder. “Which one do I pull out first?”

“You weren’t listening to me at all, were you? You take a card and it tells you what you’re supposed to remove.”

“Where’d you put the cards?”

Egbert lets you pick a card from the deck and then helps you decipher the riddle on the back. He tries to explain the whole mythology behind the ‘WRENCHED ANKLE’ before you finally just tell him to shut up and point you to the correct piece.

“Alright, now don’t touch the sides!” he warns with a grin that you know all too well is connected to his prankster’s gambit.

“Or what?”

“You’ll see!” he giggles. “Go on, hurry up!”

The game, as you were sure it would, requires more skill than you would have imagined just by watching Egbert operate, but you managed to remove the plastic wrench replica without touching the metal sidings.

“Got it!” you brag to Egbert, holding up the piece for him to see, practically daring him to top your amazing surgical skills.

You immediately feel like the world’s worst matesprit. Shit, what are you doing?

But Egbert just smiles and says “Good job, Karkat!” like the cheery, oblivious moron he is.

“Shit, motherfuckers, you best be sliding that thing over my way,” Gamzee says, interrupting your panicked thoughts.

He holds out his hands, fingers practically twitching in anticipation, until you give him the tweezers. He goes straight for a piece on the board before you stop him.

“Card, dumbass,” you remind him.

“What was that, brother?”

“You have to pick a card first,” Egbert explains. “And the card tells you what to do. Then you can try and remove a piece. Here, take one.”

Gamzee draws the card with the tiny lusus on it. The “CHARLIE HORSE” in human terms.

“Aw, no. How’d that little motherfucker get caught in there? Poor motherfuckin’ thing. Don’t worry, brother, I’ll get you out of there. Just stay still.”

Gamzee sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he carefully lowers the tweezers to the tray. He’s concentrating so hard you can swear you hear his thinkpan sizzle from here. His hand shakes with the effort it takes to navigate the tweezers into the tiny wound.

Predictably, he fucks it up and touches the sides. The human’s red nose lights up and an ear-piercing buzzer sounds, making you jump and Egbert laugh his moronic head off.

Unpredictably is every fucking thing else. You don’t even see it. You’re nowhere near fast enough. You just hear the startled honk and then see his chest heaving. Something hits you on the cheek and all of the sudden Gamzee’s got the red light bulb trapped within his tweezers, still dangling bits of wire and cardboard. You look down at the game tray and notice that’s not the only thing the human figure is missing. All the little white pieces are gone. You look down in your lap and find the Charlie Horse. That must have been what hit you in the face.

Egbert’s laughter dies as he no doubt puts two and two together as well.

“Motherfucker…”

The tweezers drop from Gamzee’s hands and clatter against the remains of the tray.

“Oh,” he whispers, his voice the kind of broken, too-quiet you hate almost as much as you hate the honking. “Shit, I’m motherfuckin’ sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it. John can fix it. Can’t you, John?”

“Yeah, sure. No problem. Don’t worry about it!”

You and John are both lying about the board, but you’re surprised to find that’s not all John’s lying about. He’s once again a skittish little hopbeast, nervously smiling and fidgeting.

This is not going as well as you’d hoped it would.

“It’s OK, Gamzee! There’s lots of other games we can play! Maybe something a little less noisy…”

You stop him when he goes to get up.

“If you pull out one more of those wretched human games I will perform surgery on myself, John Egbert. Don’t you fucking do it.”

“Promises, promises.”

“We’re leaving,” you growl. “Now.”

“But Karkat, there’s no reason to—”

“Now, Egbert.”

You shove John to the side so you can get up. Gamzee’s still staring at the ruined board like a lost infant woofbeast. That’s not entirely accurate. The look on his face isn’t so much pathetic as it is soulless. Past you wouldn’t believe a word of this if he could hear you, but you hate the intelligence that you see in his eyes every time he looks like this. You don’t know what he’s thinking, but you know that whatever it is, it’s not good. Or safe.

You kick the board across the room and kneel down in its place. Gamzee’s eyes twitch up to meet yours, but otherwise he doesn’t react until you’ve got your arms tight around him. You feel his close around your back, mechanical until the first ‘shoosh.’ Then he’s holding you so tight you think you’ll end up with bruises. He buries his face in your neck and you can feel his eyelids twitching against your bare skin. You wish you knew what to do. You wish you knew how to fix him.

You hold on to him until you feel the tension drain out of him, and then some. Until he starts squirming and picking at your shirt and hair.

“Palebrother, you have got the softest motherfuckin’ hair.”

“Yours is disgusting. The smell alone is suffocating me. How long has it been since you last made use of your ablution trap? Did you forget where it was again?”

“No worries. I totally know where that motherfucker is.”

“Prove it.”

“It’s…” He shifts his head just enough to peek over your shoulder and look around. “Uh…”

“Why am I not the least fucking bit surprised?”

He cackles into your shoulder with a few interspersed honks and snuggles closer.

“Come on,” you say, pulling him up. “I’ll show you where it is.”

You lead him down the hall to his ablution chamber and are even so gracious as to operate it for him, adjusting the temperature to something tolerable so he doesn’t freeze or burn himself. Then you remind him that, yes, the ablution fluid is a necessary part of the process and yes, he does have to put on a new set of clothes once he’s clean. Then you turn him around and shut the door to point out, once again, the huge fucking sign you carved there reading “TURN OFF THE FUCKING WATER.”

“And don’t think I won’t notice if you try to flood this place again. I will be back here to check on you later, and I expect to find a clean troll and a dry hive, not another fucking disaster area.”

“When you up and open your mouth real fuckin’ wide I can see all your little teeth. You have got the littlest motherfuckin’ teeth, palebro.”

“Damn it, Gamzee, have you heard a single word I’ve said?”

“Just like that! Aw, man, do it again, pale bro! Like a little bitty wriggler’s teeth, that’s what you’ve got. Motherfuckin’ adorable.”

“Adorabloodthirsty!” you snap. “Dry hive, clean troll. Understand?”

“What? Yeah, yeah. I’ve motherfuckin’ got this. Don’t you go and worry, pale bro.”

“And I’m coming back later.”

“Me and the horn pile will be waitin’, palebro, all clean and shit.”

“No. I am not having a feelings jam in your fucking horn pile. I could not even hear myself think last time you dragged me into that monstrosity.”

“Aw, but it ain’t the horns’ fault! Just give them another fuckin’ chance. I bet this time they’ll up and be real motherfuckin’ quiet, just for you!”

“What the fuck did I just say? No horns. Now get in the fucking ablution trap before I pass out from the overwhelming stench of you.”

“Alright, palebro, chill your tits. I’m goin’.”

Gamzee traps you in another hug before you can escape and shuts the ablution chamber door before you can push him off.

“Ablution fluid, Gamzee! Use it!” you shout through the closed door.

The only response you get is a mirthful honk.


End file.
